itsafrogslife.net/goodbook

• Created: 1998
• Type of site: static html

Back in 1997 I took part in the International Camp Staff Programme and ended up on a Boy Scouts of America campsite called Camp Freeland Leslie, situated in Oxford, Wisconsin, and run by Three Fires Council of St Charles, Illinois (the Western suburbs of Chicago). I enjoyed the summer so much I returned the next year (as part of the programme) and the following two years (for two weeks each time, under my own steam). I even took part in the Operation Icicle winter survival camps in 1998 and 2000. But I digress…

The staff on camp used a songbook called The Good Book of Peter Henry, named after a former staffer and compiled by Paul Ivanauski, another former staffer. When I left camp at the end of my first summer I took away a copy of the Good Book on floppy disc. When I got home I edited the book to add page numbers and a contents page. I also formatted the book so that songs didn’t run across two pages, and added some of my own campfire songs along the way.

In 1998 I turned the songbook into a website and published it at homepages.enterprise.net/zaba/goodbook

In 2006 I moved it to itsafrogslife.net/goodbook where it has remained relatively untouched ever since.

The website still generates a regular trickle of emails with queries about songs and requests for a copy of the book. My plan for the future is to re-build the website from scratch on an appropriate WordPress theme that will give each song its own page and make it easy for sound recordings of the songs to be embedded.

itsafrogslife.net/podcast

• Created: 2006
• Type of site: WordPress
• Theme: Suffusion
• Other portfolio entry: podcasting

The current version of the It’s A Frog’s Life Acoustic Podcast’s shownotes page was launched on its WordPress platform in February 2012. Not only did this give me ownership of the site (it was previously on Blogger) it also enabled me to host it in the itsafrogslife.net/podcast sub folder for the first time.

The new format has made it easier for me to add pages and side bar widgets, and the use of categories has made it possible to host the Instrumental Rewind show on the same site (it had previously been on a separate Blogger site).

Before I started the It’s A Frog’s Life Acoustic Podcast in July 2006 the first attempt at a shownotes page was on a Bravenet blog. Unfortunately the RSS feed only contained a summary of each post and (more importantly) removed the link to the audio file.

When the show eventually launched it was on a Blogger site which I hosted on a subdomain at podcast.itsafrogslife.net using a CNAME DNS setting. I set up a simple forwarding page that directed visitors there from itsafrogslife.net/podcast

itsafrogslife.net

• Created: 2006
• Type of site: WordPress
• Theme: Imbalance2

When I registered itsafrogslife.net in 2006 I set the web domain to forward to graham.itsafrogslife.net which hosted a website all about me. In retrospect it was somewhat egocentric, although it utilised the 1&1 website builder so at least it looked cool! It contained a light-hearted life history, information about my songwriting and Scouting, and a ‘why the frogs?’ page.

During 2011 I started the process of moving my websites and domains from 1&1 to my current web host justhost.com. When it came to moving itsafrogslife.net I knew I couldn’t take the old site with me (I’d outgrown it anyway) so set up a simple WordPress site with links to my personal websites and podcasts. Nothing flash, nothing fancy, no witty banter about growing up in the 1970s, just links. Nice.

And if you’re still desperate to know where the domain name came from you can find the answer here.

grahamholland.co.uk

• Created: 2008
• Type of site: WordPress
• Theme: WiseBusiness

There’s a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

It was April 2005 when I moved back to the UK after living in Taiwan for a year. I decided to ditch my Internet Services Provider (ISP) of 11 years along with my zaba@enterprise.net email address (I still miss it), and my homepages.enterprise.net/zaba website (I don’t miss that). The original enterprise.net company had been bought out twice and being an ISP had become a low priority for the new company. I was paying a lot of money each month, and not getting a lot for it.

So I decided to move to a new ISP – 1&1.co.uk – and to register my own domain. Imagine my horror when I found out that grahamholland.co.uk was already registered and was being used to host a Fergusson Tractor website. Not only that, the owner wasn’t even called Graham Holland! This is the point when I registered itsafrogslife.net instead.

In 2008 I noticed that the grahamholland.co.uk web domain was no longer being used so I bought it and have used it ever since. Originally the website used a basic html template and listed the podcasts I was involved with, along with a list of other Graham Hollands around the world. In 2010 I moved over to a WordPress instal as a better way to showcase my different areas of work – building websites, running live music events, producing podcasts, and copywriting.

liverpoolacoustic.co.uk

• Created: 2008
• Type of site: WordPress
• Theme: Caulk

This is my baby – the website I’m most proud of!

The Liverpool Acoustic website was created in 2008 as a central location where people could find out about the local acoustic music scene in Liverpool and Greater Merseyside.

The current version (v3) was launched in April 2012 on a WordPress platform and for the first time brought together the news and reviews items and the Spotlight show into the main body of the website (each having previously been hosted on separate Blogger sites).

I searched for a long time before I found the theme that I wanted for the news-look Liverpool Acoustic site. Caulk has a ‘featured article’ slider at the top, two ‘sticky’ posts at the side, and ‘popular’ articles beneath them. The ‘Social’ plugin enables visitors to comments using Twitter and Facebook profiles, publishes content to both these sites, and searches for social comments and retweets. Latest Tweets are shown in the right-hand side bar, as are subscription links to the News and Reviews service, and the Liverpool Acoustic Spotlight.

Moving all the previous News and Reviews items from Blogger into WordPress has enabled me to create new user profiles for the different authors and to allocate their articles to them. The WP Biographia plugin adds author information to the bottom of each post, and the Simple Local Avatars plugin allows users to add their own avatar image. Akismet protects the site from spam comments, and WP Touch makes the site accessible on smart phones.

Version 1 (above) from 2008 was based on a free html/css template. The online diary was a Google calendar embedded as a full page month-to-view on the Diary page, and as a smaller agenda view on the front page.

Both the News and Reviews and the Liverpool Acoustic Spotlight were hosted on separate Blogger sites and were incorporated into the main site using an iFrame function.

Version 2 of the website (above) was introduced in January 2010 and involved adding a new design, graphics and logo to the Version 1 template. The new designs were provided by James Wafter at Bluewhistle Creative.

liverpoolacoustic.co.uk/challenge

• Created: 2011
• Type of site: WordPress
• Theme: iFeature

The Liverpool Acoustic View Two Songwriting Challenge is a songwriting competition I ran in Autumn 2011 as part of Liverpool Acoustic’s calendar of live music events. The plan is to make it an annual event, although I’ll be changing the format slightly for 2012’s competition.

I created a separate website for the event to make it easier for people to find the information they needed without it getting lost among the news items on the main Liverpool Acoustic website.

I’d used the iFeature theme for the Liverpool South Scout District website and knew that the top image slider was visually impressive. I created all the custom graphics for the website, and will be updating it during the summer in preparation for the next competition.

liverpoolsouthscouts.org.uk

• Created: 2011
• Type of site: WordPress
• Theme: iFeature

Liverpool South Scout District was formed in April 2010 following the amalgamation of Picton and Allerton Districts with Halewood (formally in Knowsley District).

I built Picton District’s website in 2006 using a basic html/css template. When the new District was formed I volunteered to take on the role of web manager. I wanted a site that other members could log onto and create news content and I settled on a WordPress website.

The first version of the website used a custom-built UK Scouting theme, which looked good visually but which had a number of limitations, particularly over the way it handled news posts.

I moved the site to the iFeature theme which is much more adaptable to our needs. Adopting this new theme meant I had to create my own set of Scouting graphics and images to fit the slider on the homepage.

abovethebeatentrack.co.uk

• Created: 2011
• Type of site: WordPress
• Theme: Fullscreen

Above The Beaten Track is a grass-roots music festival that takes place in Liverpool. Co-ordinated by Mellowtone and their media partners, it started in 2008 at the View Two Gallery on Mathew Street before moving to the Bluecoat Arts Centre in 2010 when Liverpool Acoustic became involved.

In 2011 I volunteered to set up a website for Above the Beaten Track, and it really became something of a labour of love. After settling on the Fullscreen WordPress theme I had to create custom sized graphics for all of the artists and organisations taking part, and make sure they were published in the correct order so that the partners had prominence in the larger tiles at the top of the homepage.

I also had to work out how to alter the coding to make the site two columns wider and one row deeper.